A study released in November called Dangerous by Design looks at pedestrian danger

A study released in November called Dangerous by Design, by Transportation for America, takes a comprehensive look at pedestrian danger in the US. During the last 15 years, more than 76,000 pedestrians have been killed. Most of the deaths, 56 percent, occurred on arterial roads — focal points for sprawl, often combining substantial width, high traffic speeds, and few or no facilities for pedestrians. Seventeen percent of pedestrian deaths occurred on freeways — where people shouldn’t even be walking under normal circumstances. Only 27 percent of deaths took place on collectors and local roads, which carry the lion’s share of pedestrian traffic.

The report also ranks regions on their safety for pedestrians. The analysis factors in pedestrian fatalities and how many people walk to work, to create a pedestrian danger index. The most dangerous places are mostly Sunbelt cities with a lot of sprawl. while the safer places are Northern cities. That finding is despite the fact that the metro areas as defined are huge — New York’s stretches all of the way to Pennsylvania, for example — and they all include a substantial amount of sprawl.

The safest metro areas for people on foot are Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI, followed by Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH; New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA; Pittsburgh, PA; and Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA.